10 Biblical Principles for Improving Your Mental Health (Part 2)

If you missed Part One of this two-part post, that may be because it’s on Pastor Brad’s blog for Fresh Hope for Mental Health, and you can read Part One (Principles #1-5) here.

Here are the 5 remaining Biblical principles I suggest to improve your mental health:

Principle #6: Come clean and clear

This principle is also about sharing our faults and asking for forgiveness from others. In order to live in harmony with others and God, we need transparency.

It’s important to God that we confess our sins to others to be in right relationship with God and them (James 5:16). Not just so we can have a clear conscience, which would improve our mental health, but to heal in our relationships.

This can have an impact on our personal growth, because acknowledging our trespasses and mistakes brings them to light. What is exposed in the light cannot continue to thrive. Naming our sins within the context of one or two trusted Christians is the pivoting our mind must take to transform and turn from sin.

Like someone struggling with lust and the temptation to be sexually immoral, sharing the sin with a trusted counselor or close accountability partner can help get reframe the sin and motivate them to repent.

Guilt and shame will have less power over them, and they can continue in grace through the power Christ bestows.

Principle #7: Cast your worries on to God

Taking on our own troubles and things we can’t control can be too much for our minds to handle.

This principle is about relinquishing control over our worries and resting in God’s peace, as it says in 1 Peter 5:6-7:

“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.”

We spend too much energy and time thinking about things that won’t change. The more we stress, the more it’s not good for our mind or body’s health. It can become a bad habit and a vicious thought cycle.

Trust that God cares just as much and expressly wants you to trust Him enough to confide in Him what is bothering you. That would not only improve your thought life but enlarge your trust in Him.

Principle #8: Replace the negative with grace and truth

As Jesus was known to be full of “grace and truth” (John 1:14), we can be more like Jesus in that regard. When we replace any grudges, unforgiveness, bitterness, lies, half-truths, and deception with the opposite, we’re becoming more like Jesus.

Like a plant, what may be sown into the soil to allow the seeds of whatever is planted there in the hole to take root. So it is with our minds – they’re vacuums. The mind cannot be empty for long before a thought returns or is replaced.

Treating your thoughts like plants can have a bountiful harvest of benefits.

Rethinking and replacing your thoughts will change the soil of your mind and heart. Replace hate and anger with love and kindness. Remove comparisons and justifications and plant contentment and mercy. See what grows.

Be open-minded to Jesus’s words and love, and His Holy Spirit can work in your spirit to retrain and correct faulty, sinful thought patterns.

Principle #9: Take care of yourself with medicine, if necessary

In 1 Timothy 5:23, Paul instructs Timothy to take a little wine for an upset stomach and “frequent infirmities.” The exact dosage is not necessary to know, just as the exact medicine is not within a Biblical text regarding our psychiatric medicines.

But we can’t deny that medicine for our mind is a necessary and much-needed thing to treat our mental illnesses.

When our minds are missing the chemicals they need to produce a balanced, functioning output, we have the gift of modern-day psychiatric medications.

Had I been born 100 years earlier (that’s 1887), I would’ve ended up institutionalized or worse, had a lobotomy procedure done. A frightening thought but sobering to think how far society, science, and pharmacology have come.

When we need them, we take the “seek and find” principle (trial and error as I mentioned in Pastor Brad’s blog post), and over time we find the best combination dosage possible.

Working with our prescribing psychiatrist and actively participating in talk therapy can be the best practice for a fractured mind.

There’s nothing unbiblical about that, as God cares for our whole wellbeing out of love for us.

Principle #10: Give thanks through all of it

Need I say more?

Thankfulness is linked to levels of happiness in scientific studies, and for good reason.

Giving thanks opens up our attitude to embrace life no matter the circumstances. When we’re grateful, we welcome all that God has brought us through and will bring us to.

“Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, NIV)

What an adventure when we are open and willing to be thankful and happy for all of it.

His light shines brighter. People will wonder what reason we have for that hope, and we can tell them: Jesus.

Who else do we need?